In The Desert
by Ananke
Summary: A future Harry Kim file a deposition on Kathryn Janeway.


Rating: R (For subject matter, not language or sexuality)  
Disclaimer: All characters herein owned by Paramount Studios and various other  
entities. No copyright infringement intended.  
Summary: A future Harry Kim answers a Starfleet deposition on his most   
bemoaned subject...Kathryn Janeway.  
---  
  
-When you are older and speak of this-and you will-please be kind- Deborah  
Kerr, Tea and Sympathy  
  
---  
To: Starfleet Command  
From: Lt. Commander Harry Kim, First Officer, USS Devi  
Re: Deposition, Investigation, Kathryn Janeway  
---  
  
"In the desert I saw a creature, naked, bestial, who, squatting upon the  
ground, held his heart in his  
hands..."  
  
"Crane. Stephen." The poetry recital drifted in from my right side...her  
kitchen, I realized immediately.  
Stepping in, I had to shake my head...she had left the security codes open.  
Stupid, Captain, I mentally  
berated, this is Earth, not Voyager. The neighbors aren't half as neighborly.  
  
Her head angled up, turned, lips curving. "Open door policy works rather well.  
The crew, you understand.  
Being home is still novel enough that they want to see the captain. Give them   
a  
few weeks. They'll beg  
for locked doors."  
  
"It's dangerous." I pointed out, not doubting that she already realized.   
Change  
of subject, no use arguing  
with a forcefield. "Happy New Year's."  
  
"Are you aware...Harry." She waved me to the chair opposite, standing, and as  
she moved from the  
shadows, I realized that she wasn't in uniform. Not even dressed, just draped  
in a startlingly bright  
kimono. Almost scarlet, it heightened her pallor and brought color to her  
cheeks and lips. I wondered if  
that was the purpose, she hadn't looked healthy or especially attractive in  
anything else lately. "Are you  
aware that at this very moment...barring temporal snarls...on the planet   
Regaas  
a hundred thousand  
souls are dying?"  
  
"You spend your evenings researching trivia like that?"  
  
She smiled, sipping coffee, leaning against a wall. "It's custom, you see.   
They  
believe that in order to  
please the ancestors and protect the future from idiots and  
overpopulation...honor, duty, and all those  
lovely tidings...a certain number of sacrifices must be made. It's brutal,  
ugly. We used to do it. The  
Vulcans used to do it. Other races have, do, or will. The Federation doesn't  
cover all borders, or protect  
all lives, and nor should it."  
  
"Why the topic?" After seven years, I knew enough to foresee a point, even if  
it wasn't clear yet.   
  
She sat again, hands curling around the mug. "Regaas used to be among prime  
Federation worlds. They  
were respected, feared, eventually subjugated. Not in any literal sense of the  
word, of course, the  
Federation never forces itself upon any civilization. It all began very  
innocently, a treaty during Kirk's  
time. I believe he may have even initiated the talks. A few decades after,  
they were  
industrialized...supported by trade and import. Then, contact with another  
Federation species ended in  
plague...nearly eighty percent of the population died. All but a very few of  
the other twenty percent were  
weakened, or deformed, or...it was a disaster. The Regaans blamed the  
Federation, and withdrew into  
their former isolation. As far as we can tell, future generations were mix and  
mingle...most healthy, a few  
deficient. The deficient are killed in ceremony each year at this time. No  
Federation ambassador has ever  
reached any diplomatic peace with them. Some have never made it back alive."  
  
"So you think we...the Federation...are just a by blow of good fortune, doomed  
to eventually cave back in  
on our own foundation..."  
  
She shook her head, swiftly, chuckling. "I don't know that I was thinking that  
big, its tantamount to  
treason in this time of hardship, but...on more personal levels, I suppose   
that  
good fortune never comes  
without collateral loss."  
  
"Voyager."  
  
"They plan to rebuild her from the keel up. Turn our lady into a warship.   
She's  
proven herself in battle,  
and she's needed. They don't want me to captain. I'm up for promotion."  
  
And the prospective Admiral didn't looked too happy about it. "Then fight it.  
She's your ship."  
  
"Is she? Here?" Janeway's gaze was deep, penetrating. "In the Delta Quadrant,  
yes, I suppose so. She  
was our ship. Here, she just happens to be a particularly gleaming registry in  
a database of a dozen like  
her. I won't recognize her, after the refitting. It won't feel like home. But  
then, neither does home."  
  
"I spoke to Chakotay's sister today, trying to contact him." I tried a subject  
change...no lighter topic,  
Chakotay, but less universally shaking.   
  
She closed her eyes. "Oh?"  
  
"And he doesn't have a sister."  
  
The eyes flew open, brow cocking. "I knew it."  
  
I had to grin. It had been ship wide fodder, of course, when the Commander had  
announced his  
long-distance call intentions that long, long ago day...none of the records  
indicated siblings, and none of  
the Maquis had remembered a mention.   
  
"No sister. I spoke with a woman named Taya...yeah, that's where he got the  
name suggestion. His  
daughter."  
  
She sipped thoughtfully, less surprised than I had expected. "He wasn't  
married."  
  
"No." Not by any official record, at least. "She was born while he was still   
in  
Starfleet. 2365. Raised by a  
foster mother. The biological one died, at the hands of the Cardassians. She  
was half-Bajoran, their  
daughter is a quarter. He tried to be there, but with the Maquis and...well,  
she lost him to the Delta  
Quadrant."  
  
"Gods, it must have killed him to have been so far from her." She echoed my  
original thoughts...but  
maybe that was the secret. In the Alpha Quadrant of that long ago, Chakotay  
might have been a  
single-minded rebel, but once stuck in the Delta Quadrant, he had just been a  
parent, looking for a way  
home. Maybe it had killed him, the part Kathryn Janeway hadn't.   
  
She spoke again, staring beyond me, eyes shadowed, focused in thought. "So  
there I have his reasoning.  
I always wondered how such a strong-minded man could agree to integrate back  
into Starfleet so easily.  
He just wanted to get home, and knew staying the rebel would dash that  
possibility forever. It wasn't our  
common goal he was fighting for, was it, Mr. Kim? It was his, only his. He   
made  
the journey with us, not  
for us, milked his prison ship for her worth. How very, very damned ironic."  
  
I decided not to continue the enigmatic search and tell. "She said he and   
Seven  
were off on business, but  
they've settled on Bajor."  
  
"And he didn't bother to tell any of us. We're dead to him, aren't we, Harry?"  
Capable, elegant fingers  
gripped the coffee mug, lips thinning. Shaking her head, she stood, pulling  
glasses out and motioning to  
the already uncorked Romulan Ale on the counter.   
  
"I don't hold my drink well, even synthenol." No lie there, my last excursion  
had ended up with waking  
floating somewhere off the port nacelle of the Devi. Nude. That one had nearly  
knocked me from First  
Officer to Crewman.   
  
She smiled, wryly. "We all have our moments, Mister Kim. Very frankly, there  
are entire months of my  
life I can't account for, by drink or drug or simple mental blockage. The   
human  
mind is hardly infallible. I  
admire the man who can turn away an unwanted memory without the help of  
addiction or insanity."  
  
"Like Chakotay."  
  
"He always did have his ways, didn't he?"   
  
"He'll never be dead enough to you." I drew from her earlier comment, watching  
in fascination as she  
downed her third glass. Most human females keeled over at one Romulan Ale. It  
empathized her position.  
Strong. Numb. Untouchable, certainly undefeatable. I hadn't missed that side   
of  
her very much.  
  
"Oh, he's dead to me." Her eyes met mine, level, clear. "Only the dead haunt  
quite so well." Then,  
shifting, she dropped the glass, watching it shatter on the hardwood floor.  
"I'm ruining your New Year's,  
aren't I?"  
  
"I've had worse." I moved too, then, rising with discomfort. She was drunk, I  
realized, in her own  
command way, and a mean drunk at that. Mean and melancholy. "Maybe I should  
call the Doc and get  
you a hypo..."  
  
"You don't want to break his heart that way, not after he believes he's done   
so  
well with us all."  
  
No, I didn't. "Actually, the reason I came to see you involves Medical. I ran  
into Counselor Troi. She  
seems to find you behind in your appointments."  
  
"I haven't gone to any."  
  
"Don't do this to yourself, Captain."  
  
Her smile was swift, amused, razor sharp, as she swept the glass shards up and  
tossed them in a  
recycler. "I hate shattering your hero worship, Harry, but I am only human. I  
have my days." Her hand  
touched mine briefly, meant to reassure. "Bajor, you said? I may pay a visit,  
drink in the fresh air."  
  
"I don't think that's wise." But then, how unwise could it have been? Either  
she stayed there, dwelled on  
her lost command, drank, became a bonified 24th century louse, or she tried a  
shot at rediscovering her  
friend, her soul...her soulmate. Nothing would stop her from going. I just  
hoped she wouldn't stay.  
  
She went, the next day. You tell me Starfleet received a note of resignation  
that same morning, and her  
uniforms and com badge. I don't know about any of that. She contacted Tom   
Paris  
and B'Elanna Torres  
and I in Marseilles, told us she was off on a vacation, not to worry, as if we  
hadn't become so good at  
worrying about her giving it up then was even possible.  
You tell me that she never made it to Bajor or Chakotay, that Ezri Dax,  
concerned about more missed  
appointments, found her in her guest suite at Deep Space Nine, in a pool of  
blood, with her wrists and  
throat and chest slashed. You want me to tell you whether or not a homicide  
investigation should be  
launched. Should I lie for public relations, give security something to muse  
over? As a First Officer of the  
'fleet, I should. You guys like public relations coups.   
As her Ensign, her friend, her could have been lover, I'm not lying. I've only  
known one person capable of  
destroying Kathryn Janeway, and that was Kathryn Janeway herself. Looks like  
she succeeded. Leave it  
be. She left me her own little note, from Deep Space Nine, and I firmly hold   
it  
to be a suicide note.   
'In the desert   
I saw a creature, naked, bestial  
Who, squatting upon the ground  
Held his heart in his hands  
And ate of it...  
I said, "Is it good, friend?"   
"It is bitter-bitter," he answered.  
"But I like it, because it is bitter  
And because it is my heart."  
---  
Deposition Transmitted  
---  
Updated Case Status: Closed  
Signed Recommendations:   
Cmdr. Deanna Troi, USS Enterprise  
Lt. Commander Ezri Dax, Deep Space Nine  
Witness: Adm. Owen Paris, Starfleet Command.  
Subject: Kathryn Janeway  
Cause of Death: Suicide  
--- 


End file.
